As streaming services inch closer and closer to reinventing cable outright, they’ve started swapping films and shows that might’ve once been exclusive to a single platform. That’s actually benefitted a title like “Cry Macho,” which recently migrated from Warner Bros.’ Max onto Netflix. According to the Netflix viewership aggregator FlixPatrol, Eastwood’s neo-Western cracked the service’s top 10 in the U.S. on September 18, 2023, and even climbed a couple of spots the day after. That makes “Cry Macho” the latest Eastwood offering to do so after his 2018 crime drama “The Mule,” which similarly charted on Netflix earlier this year.

In some ways, the history behind “Cry Macho” is more interesting than the actual film. It began as an original screenplay that writer N. Richard Nash was unable to get produced, which led to him reconfiguring it as a novel in 1975. After that, Nash was able to successfully re-pitch the script, only for the project to fall into limbo as it passed through multiple hands over the next four decades. Eastwood himself was once attached to star in the film during that period, as was Arnold Schwarzenegger as recently as 2011. It might have been the perfect comeback vehicle for Arnold, too, allowing him to reinvent himself following his post-Governator return to acting.

Instead, “Cry Macho” will likely serve as a coda to Eastwood’s acting career (he’s still planning to direct one final film, “Juror No. 2”). As the tale of a seasoned buckaroo hoping to pass on one last piece of hard-earned wisdom to a younger generation, it’s an appropriately self-reflexive and poetic role for him to go out on. Even if he was too old by the time he finally got around to playing it.